Brandon Jennings saw the end coming. And honestly, he thinks it needed to happen.
The former Bucks guard, who played alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo during those early, scrappy years in Milwaukee, watched this week as the franchise shipped its generational superstar to the Miami Heat. It wasn’t a shock. The Heat beat out the Celtics in what became a two-team race for The Greek Freak. But Jennings, speaking on the Gil’s Arena podcast, framed the split less as a tragedy and more as a necessary, if painful, step.
“It was bittersweet,” Jennings said. “It’s a relationship that needed a breakup. I think if you had kept it going and lingered it, it would have ended really badly.”
He’s not wrong. The Bucks got a title out of Giannis. The 2021 championship is the thing that will hang in the rafters forever. And Jennings made sure to point out that Milwaukee got everything it could have hoped for from the No. 15 pick in the 2013 draft.
“They drafted someone and we’re just looking at the draft, but when you draft a player, you’re hoping that you get the best, and you get the most out of that draft pick, and they did, with Giannis, for 13 years,” Jennings added. “And he brought excitement, and he brought something to the city that they hadn’t seen in 50 years. So, to me, he did his job.”
Two MVPs. A Finals MVP. Five All-NBA selections. And a city that had spent half a century waiting for a parade. That’s a pretty good return on investment.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The divorce didn’t just happen overnight. According to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jim Owczarski, Giannis essentially ghosted the front office before the trade went down.
Back in March, Giannis floated the idea of “couples therapy” to patch things up. By April 12, he said he was putting his phone on do not disturb and walking away from it all.
“Just stay away from it – all of it,” Antetokounmpo said then. “I feel like this season, not just because of the way it went, it was draining for me for sure and how everybody approached my situation and the Bucks situation. But again, if it was draining for me, it was definitely draining for the team and for the organization.”
It’s rare to see a star of his caliber check out that publicly before a trade. But maybe that’s the point. The relationship had run its course. Both sides knew it. The front office knew it. Giannis knew it. And Jennings, who watched from the inside as Giannis turned from a raw teenager into the best player in franchise history, seems at peace with how it ended.
“Giannis, to me, is the staple of what a professional athlete is supposed to be when it comes to going through the league,” Jennings said. “They said he wasn’t going to be an MVP. He wasn’t going to do this, wasn’t going to be all that, and did everything. So, the Bucks got what they wanted.”
Now it’s Miami’s turn to see what he can do.
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